Best Diablo 4 Sorcerer build: Best skills for the Sorcerer
Learn how to make our Lightning Sorcerer build in Diablo 4
Looking for the best Diablo 4 Sorcerer build? The Sorcerer is the typical glass cannon in Diablo 4, making it a high-risk, high-reward playstyle. If that suits you, or you just want to see big spells do big damage, then you're in the right place. Fortunately, the Sorcerer is one of the best classes in Diablo 4, with huge damage potential that you can use to drop demons from afar.
In this guide, we'll break down the best Sorcerer class in Diablo 4, covering which skills you need to take for our Lightning build. We'll then provide the attack pattern that you should follow in combat, along with the best attributes and gems that you need to look out for when acquiring gear.
Best Sorcerer build in Diablo 4
Our Diablo 4 Lightning Sorcerer build focuses on using electric spells to generate Crackling Energy orbs while dealing damage to enemies. Crackling Energy orbs can then be picked up to deal additional damage to nearby enemies, and they'll also power up some of your other abilities.
Lightning spells in Diablo 4 are especially good at clearing crowds of enemies, making our Lightning Sorcerer build best-suited against mobs. This makes it excel at clearing dungeons quickly, but it isn't quite as effective against single targets.
It's worth mentioning that the Sorcerer is predominantly a ranged build, and you're going to die fast if enemies get in melee range. We take that even further with the aptly-named Glass Cannon skill, which increases your damage dealt by 18%, while increasing the damage you take by 9%. More damage both ways, then, which highlights that you're best striking from a distance.
Diablo 4 Lightning Sorcerer build skills
Below, you'll find a full list of the skills that you should acquire for our Diablo 4 Lightning Sorcerer build, in order:
- Spark (Basic)
- Enhanced Spark
- Chain Lightning (Core)
- Enhanced Chain Lightning
- Destructive Chain Lightning
- Flickering Spark
- Teleport
- Enhanced Teleport
- Mystical Teleport
- Glass Cannon
- Glass Cannon lvl 2
- Lightning Spear
- Enhanced Lightning Spear
- Summoned Lightning Spear
- Chain Lightning lvl 2
- Glass Cannon lvl 3
- Ball Lightning
- Enhanced Ball Lightning
- Wizard's Ball Lightning
- Static Discharge
- Invigorating Conduit
- Invigorating Conduit lvl 2
- Invigorating Conduit lvl 3
- Unstable Currents
Our Diablo 4 Lightning Sorcerer build focuses on generating Crackling Energy, so many skills are upgraded to focus on forming these orbs when you kill enemies. Flickering Spark, Destructive Chain Lightning, and Wizard's Ball Lightning, for example, can all generate Crackling Energy.
Crackling Energy deals extra damage to nearby enemies when picked up, but that isn't the only benefit. With the Summoned Lightning Spear upgrade, your Lightning Spear skill will also deal up to 100% extra damage after collecting Crackling Energy. Having all three levels of Invigorating Conduit also makes Crackling Energy a fast mana builder, allowing you to quickly refill your mana so that you can keep casting spenders, such as Chain Lightning and Ball Lightning.
Spark
Spark is a basic attack that you can use when out of mana, but the Flickering Spark ability also turns it into a builder later on. Flickering Spark will occasionally form a Crackling Energy when Spark hits an enemy, and when paired with Invigorating Conduit, this should allow you to quickly build mana.
Chain Lightning
Chain Lightning is your core spell for our Lightning Sorcerer build, sending out a bolt of lightning that deals 42% damage and chains between up to 6 nearby enemies. That's incredibly powerful at even the base level, giving you an effective method of clearing enemy mobs, but the real strength comes from Destructive Chain Lightning.
Destructive Chain Lightning gives you a 25% chance to form a Crackling Energy whenever you crit with Chain Lightning. Since Enhanced Chain Lightning also gives you a +3% crit chance per chained enemy, you should find that Crackling Energy forms often when fighting large groups.
Teleport
Teleport does exactly what you'd expect, allowing you to teleport a short distance so you can quickly reposition in a fight.
That's a useful skill for survivability, of course, but Mystical Teleport really helps it synergise with this Crackling Energy build by allowing orbs to hit two additional enemies for four seconds after teleporting.
Lightning Spear
Lightning Spear is a cooldown ability that summons a Lightning Spear to hunt enemies for six seconds. This is a powerful skill that costs no mana, but the Summoned Lightning Spear upgrade ties it directly into this build.
Summoned Lightning Spear gives the next Spear a 20% damage boost when you collect Crackling Energy, which can stack up to a total of 100% extra damage. This gives you even more incentive to grab Crackling Energy, as they'll now power up Lightning Spear while still delivering that initial shock damage to nearby enemies when picked up.
Ball Lightning
Ball Lightning is the other major spender in this build, costing 50 mana per cast. It throws out a slow-moving ball of lightning that continually zaps nearby enemies. This allows you to quickly weaken large groups, but the Wizard's Ball Lightning upgrade also helps you get more Crackling Energy.
Wizard's Ball Lightning will form a Crackling Energy when it hits an enemy at least four times with a single cast. This can only happen once per cast, but it's a guaranteed Crackling Energy. Other skills only offer a chance of forming a Crackling Energy, so that guaranteed opportunity offered by Ball Lightning makes it one of the best spells for this Lightning Sorcerer build.
Unstable Currents
Unstable Currents is the ultimate ability for our Lightning Sorcerer, and it's incredibly powerful. When activated, you will cast a random core, conjuration, or mastery shock skill whenever you cast any shock skill for the next ten seconds.
That essentially doubles up your firepower, delivering an extra spell each time you cast any of the shock skills in this build. As mentioned above, it's an incredibly powerful skill, but that means it also has a long cooldown of 70 seconds. It's not a skill you can pop often, then, so save it for particularly tough elite enemies or bosses.
If you're not sure how to use these skills effectively, follow the attack pattern below:
- Use Chain Lightning and Ball Lightning to clear a group.
- Teleport into the group to collect any Crackling Energy.
- Grab all of the nearby Crackling Energy to deal extra damage and refill your mana.
- Summon a Lightning Spear to finish off any nearby targets.
- Get distance from your enemies and repeat.
Diablo 4 Lightning Sorcerer best Enchantment
The Sorcerer class also has access to a unique Enchantment system that allows you to place spells into Enchantment slots on your hotbar. When spells are equipped as an Enchantment, rather than an active skill, they will grant a passive bonus. However, this means that they can no longer be cast as an active skill.
For this build, we'd recommend using Fireball as an Enchantment. This grants a passive that makes every enemy explode upon death, dealing damage to other enemies. This acts similarly to the Corpse Explosion skill that Necromancers have used throughout the Diablo franchise.
To unlock Fireball in this build, you can either put a point into the skill to unlock it, or simply look for gear that unlocks it instead.
The full game will allow you to have up to three Enchantment slots, but the beta only offers one. You'll unlock this Enchantment slot at level 15.
Diablo 4 Lightning Sorcerer build attributes
Your time with the Diablo 4 beta will likely be spent gathering randomly-rolled gear, as you won't find any endgame gear during Act 1. Gear has attribute scores, and when playing as the Sorcerer, you should look for gear with high Intelligence and Willpower.
Intelligence affects your damage as a Sorcerer, with each Intelligence point offering an extra 0.1% damage. That might seem tiny, but it adds up and can have a significant impact in the late game.
Willpower ties into mana generation, with each point giving you an extra 0.1%. Again, it's a meagre amount in the early game, but even slight boosts to your mana generation will help you cast Chain Lightning and Ball Lightning more often.
Diablo 4 Lightning Sorcerer build gems
Gear in Diablo 4 has gem sockets. These allow you to insert gems into your gear, offering extra bonuses, similar to those offered by attributes. Gems will have different effects depending on whether they're placed into a weapon or armor.
For the Sorcerer, we'd recommend using Rubies in any gem sockets. When placed in weapons, Rubies offer +6% resource generation. That's a large buff to your mana generation, which'll prove important when you need to quickly refill your mana during a fight.
When placed in armor, Rubies offer +5% extra life. We've mentioned that the Sorcerer is a glass cannon class, and of course we use the Glass Cannon skill to increase damage dealt and received, making this particular build even more susceptible. Fortunately, the extra life that you can gain from Rubies will add some much-needed survivability, ensuring that you don't drop in every fight.
That wraps up our Diablo 4 Lightning Sorcerer build guide. For other builds, make sure to check out our powerful Whirlwind Barbarian build in Diablo 4. If you want to read our thoughts on the game's beta, check out our Diablo 4 preview.
